EPISODE 320

Seniors are not the only group targeted by scammers, but they can be especially vulnerable. In this episode, AARP’s chief fraud prevention expert, Kathy Stokes, shares important advice for protecting yourself — and your older loved ones — against scammers. Kathy says scamming is an “epidemic” that can be fought with knowledge. Whether it’s the ‘Tech Support’ scam, the ‘Grandparent’ scam, the ‘Banking’ scam, or the ‘Romance’ scam…Kathy says you can empower yourself using a “Pause, Protect, Reflect” strategy. Listen and learn more about the $196 billion per year criminal underworld of scamming from one of America’s leading fraud-prevention specialists!

TRANSCRIPT:

ANNOUNCER: It’s You Earned This, the Social Security and Medicare podcast, brought to you by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and now your host, Walter Gottlieb.

WALTER: Seniors are becoming the majority in America, but they are also becoming a prime target of scammers. And there are so many scams that can affect seniors. There’s the tech support scam, the gift card scam, and the romance scam. And they are getting more and more sophisticated all the time. So how do seniors and their families protect themselves against scams? Well, today we have a nationally recognized leader in this field.

She is Kathy Stokes, Director of Fraud Prevention Programs at AARP, and she heads the AARP Fraud Watch Network, which she’ll tell us more about. Kathy joins us now from Washington. 

Kathy, thank you very much for joining us today. How are you doing?

KATHY: I’m doing okay. I’m really glad to be here. So, thanks for inviting me.

WALTER: We are happy to have you here, especially to discuss such an important topic: senior scams. But first, can you explain your role at AARP, and also what the AARP Fraud Watch Network is?

KATHY: I’m the Senior Director of Fraud Prevention Programs at AARP, and I run a social mission program called the Fraud Watch Network. And we’re all about getting education out to our constituency — Americans 50+ and their families — in any way possible. 

But it really applies to everybody. To help everyone understand the fraud crisis and how at risk our financial futures are because of it. And then we have the other half supporting victims.

WALTER: Before we get into more detail, is it fair to say that there’s an epidemic of scams targeting seniors now? And if so, why is that?

KATHY: It is an epidemic. It’s something that really targets everybody, of every age. You know, these criminals don’t follow demographic profiles, but when they can get a hold of an older adult, they know that’s where most of the payoff is, because that’s the wealth in this country.

WALTER: So, you said that scammers aren’t necessarily deliberately targeting seniors, but are seniors among the most vulnerable to scams, or is that just a myth?

KATHY: I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s not just older adults. And we’ve allowed ourselves as a society to believe that fraud only targets older adults. 

We’ve said it’s because of cognitive decline. It’s because they’re not tech-savvy. It’s because they’re too nice to hang up the phone.

And anecdotally, sure, that’s right. But, you know, in the end, those are really all tropes.

WALTER: What are we talking about money-wise in this criminal enterprise? How much money is stolen per year, roughly?

KATHY: Are you ready for this, Walter? Because it’s a big number. 

We have a problem with under-reporting. So a lot of what’s out there is based on what’s reported, estimates, and surveys. But the Federal Trade Commission came out in 2025 and said, based on 2024 data, that Americans had $12.8 billion stolen from them in a single year, and they came back to that number this past December — they’ve been doing this for three years now.

They came up with another report that says, “You know, based on our estimate of under-reporting, it’s not $12.8 billion. It’s more like $196 billion.”

WALTER: Wow.

KATHY: Can you even fathom how much that is? I mean, it’s the GDP of many countries put together. If you were to rank it as a corporation in revenue, it would be Fortune 17.

WALTER: Fortune 17, so would it be the 17th highest-grossing business?

KATHY: The highest in revenue, yep.

WALTER: Oh my goodness. Well, that really puts things in perspective. So let’s quickly run through the most common scams targeting seniors, or that seniors have fallen victim to. What are they, basically?

KATHY: I think the most prominent one is the tech support scam, but we also have bank impostors. We have lottery scams that happen. There’s a range of them, and it’s kind of strange because they have sort of morphed into each other. Another big one is government impersonation, but they all kind of come together.

WALTER: And there’s the romance scam?

KATHY: Yeah, that’s one of the bigger ones, too.

WALTER: So, who are these scammers, Kathy? Are they random individuals or organized criminal networks? What are we dealing with here?

KATHY: I know the tendency we’ve had is to sort of think about that guy who’s maybe hanging out in his mom’s basement, working on the Internet, making scam phone calls. 

And I’m sure that guy’s still out there. And now that there are so many tools they can use to scale their own practice, this might be a growth area. 

But what we’re really seeing is transnational criminal enterprises, and they invaded the space during COVID, went into Southeast Asia, and turned these casinos that were sitting dormant into scam centers.

And they built a complicated, sophisticated enterprise with employees. Oh, and by the way, the employees are people who were made to believe that they were going to go and get this great job in Cambodia, and IT or customer service, and they get there, and their passports and their phones are taken away from them, and they are forced, enslaved, to be the frontline scammers targeting U.S. citizens and European citizens.

WALTER: Oh, my goodness. So the scammers put together a workforce or a call center or something akin to maybe Putin’s operation in St. Petersburg, Russia?

KATHY: Mostly what we’re seeing is Chinese criminal organizations behind all this, at least what’s happening in Southeast Asia.

WALTER: Oh, I see. Okay. Well, that is unfortunate in many ways. I want to say that we’ve all probably been fooled by scammers at some point…

I myself got one of those old AT&T card scams at 4 a.m., got a phone call, and only realized in my drowsy state that it was a scam toward the end, before it was too late. A few years ago, I was targeted by one of those “We have put an arrest warrant out on your wife” scams, and I almost did what they told me until I’m like, “Wait a minute,” because they were both very realistic.

So, if I could be fooled, what are some hallmarks or telltale signs of a scam that people, especially older people, should look out for?

KATHY: I think I can rephrase what happened to you, Walter. You weren’t fooled. You were attacked by a sophisticated fraud enterprise that knows, because they have a playbook, what to do to push the right buttons to make you act without thinking.

WALTER: Right.

KATHY: And that’s what happened to you. You could be a Nobel Peace Prize winner. 

You could be the smartest mathematician, the smartest politician, and it happens to all of us because they know that if they can get us into a heightened emotional state pretty quickly and make us feel the need to do something very urgently, then our brains are set to just bypass logic. It’s been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years, or however long our brains have been around, right?

Our brains were set up to move to action and bypass logic on the days of the saber-toothed tiger, right?

WALTER: Sure.

KATHY: You want to stand there in front of that tiger and go, hmm, I wonder if you’re going to attack me?

WALTER: Right, right.

KATHY: Or does the brain go, get out now, right?

WALTER: Goodness.

KATHY: And the criminals are using that. There’s an academic term for it. It’s called the amygdala hijack. 

So what happened to you at four in the morning, Walter, is that you got a call out of nowhere. It put you in a heightened emotional state, with urgency, and that was what they needed to get you. And those are the three things we want people to focus on. That contact out of the blue that yields that heightened emotional state and contains urgency.

If we can understand that most scams use these three elements, we can also train our brains to know what to do. And that is what we’re calling taking an active pause. It’s that intentional step back. “Wait a minute. Haven’t I heard something about this? Well, they’re saying my bills are late, but I just paid it yesterday.” Or, “My grandson was just over for dinner two nights ago. How could he be in Mexico and in jail right now?

WALTER: Yeah…

KATHY: Take that pause, sort of reflect on what you might know, or what you know, what the situation is in your life that this might not align to, and that helps you to protect your assets and get you to disengage with that communication.

WALTER: So, it would require some mindfulness, right, it would require some immediate perspective on your own instincts to go: “Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute…” which happened to me after a while with each of these scams, but not right away. 

Luckily, before I bought the gift card or gave them my calling card number.

KATHY: You know, there are 80 scams and 800 red flags, and what we want to try to do is bring it up a level you might remember. I know. I think I was in second grade when I learned what to do in the event of a fire. 

WALTER: Mm-hmm.

KATHY: Do you remember what we learned?

WALTER: Stop, drop, and roll, or look for the nearest exit?

KATHY: Stop, drop, and roll is what we need, but we also need to help you understand that if these three things are coming at you, we want you to react to that trigger as if it were a fire: stop, drop, and roll. 

If we can get people to understand the three things — the out-of-the-blue contact puts you in an emotional state that contains urgency — then we can teach the stop, drop, and roll, which in this case, is pause, reflect, protect.

WALTER: That is a great metaphor. And before we get into the nitty-gritty of the various scams, given that some seniors are not fully, you know, cognitively capable, especially once they get into their 80s and 90s — some, not all — what family members can do to help protect their older loved ones from scammers?

KATHY: You know, I think one of the more important things is having regular conversations about what’s happening out here, especially putting it into the context of “This is happening to everybody. We need to work together and have each other’s backs.”

I think a lot of times, especially if there’s cognitive decline, we’re scared of what might happen to mom or dad, and so we’re like: “Just don’t answer the phone and don’t do this and don’t do that,” and we don’t give them the context. And I think the context here is really helpful.

Fraud is the number one crime in this country. You’re gonna get phone calls, you’re gonna get emails, text messages, anything online. And we have to understand that these are all ways criminals can reach us. 

So, I’m gonna show you, Mom and Dad, how to set up your social media so that only the people that you know and love, that are part of your community, can see what you’re posting there. I’m gonna set up a call blocking app for you. 

There are things that we can do, but we really need to just have a regular conversation about it. The more we talk about it and engage each other on what these things look like, I think we will all be better off.

WALTER: So, again, it would be the wrong instinct to say, if you have an aging parent, old, “Just don’t answer the phone, don’t text people back, maybe it’s time to get rid of your email account.” That would be the wrong approach.

KATHY: I think the approach that would work would be what you think might work for you. You know you want to go in as a team. “Hey, Mom, I just heard about this new scam where you get this pop-up on your screen, and this noise happens, and it’s an 800 number, and you’ve got a call on this number, and I find out it’s a total scam. What do you think about that? Have you heard about that?” And then it’s a conversation, and maybe mom is talking to Aunt Mary, and she tells Aunt Mary about it, and it moves through the family chain.

WALTER: That way it’s like the old commercial: then they tell two friends, then they tell two friends, then they touch yes, so on, so on. 

So, let’s dive into the specific scams you listed earlier. So, you say it’s been around a long time, but obviously it’s not dead. What is the tech support scam, and what is its most current incarnation?

KATHY: The tech support scam is typically you’re on your device, your laptop or whatever, and you get a pop-up, and it’s maybe not even just one pop-up, it’s a bunch, and it’s warning you that there’s a terrible virus, there’s a problem. Sometimes it comes with this really loud noise, so you’re freaking out. And what is your solution? It’s right in front of you. Call this number, and you’re in this heightened emotional state from this out-of-the-blue contact that contains urgency. And what do you do?

You pick up, call the number, and they say they’re from Microsoft and they’re there to help you. Typically, they would get you to allow them remote access to your computer. 

WALTER: Yeah… 

KATHY: And they show you all the terrible things that are happening, which really aren’t terrible things, but they look terrible if you don’t know what the background in your computer looks like, and then they would say: They’ll fix it, but you have to pay this much, and then we’ll give you a year’s protection subscription.

That’s another 200 bucks, and that would be it, and maybe you’d pay by this card, which was something that you had talked about earlier. Right, maybe there would be some other way they could get that money from you, but then it would be one-and-done. 

Now, you get them, and they remote in, and they go, “Oh my gosh, I see something terrible happening. And you bank with Bank of America, right? They know all this information. 

“Well, I’m gonna get the fraud team from Bank of America on the line with us…”

WALTER: Oh goodness…

KATHY: …”Because there’s something going on with your accounts.”

And then the fraud investigator — who’s another scammer, of course — is on the line with you and they’re making you believe that your account is being actively attacked. They may even say: “We just got a call. We’re gonna go right back in. There’s someone from the FTC or the FBI…” And get them on the line and say: “Yeah, this is all happening because apparently, you purchased pornographic material and this is causing all this, and you know. 

So you’re like: “Oh my god, I didn’t do that. What do I do? What do I do? You go right into action.

And they are like: “Okay, well, we’ve got to start moving your money into a safe account.” 

The way to do that is go to your bank, take out X-thousands-and-thousands of dollars in cash, and they’ll tell you where to go to get to this machine, where you’re gonna feed it, and how they’ll protect it for you. And this machine is a crypto ATM — which there are tens of thousands of out there.

You may not even notice them (crypto ATMs) if you’re not thinking about it, but sometimes they’re sitting right next to a bank ATM, and they’re used to convert cash into Bitcoin. 

And a lot of criminal activity happens, frankly, with these machines and one of the biggest, from what we understand, it’s getting older adults to believe they have to move their money and that you’re helping them protect their money and as soon as they get that money in the machine and hit a button or a QR code, that money is gone and off to the criminals.

WALTER: That’s why you were just talking about the bank imposter scam, because you sort of segwayed rather seamlessly from tech support to that. Is it a separate kind of scam?

KATHY: That’s what’s happening. When I was saying, everything’s sort of morphing together, the bank imposter scam also be…

You’ll get text alerts on your phone for activity on your phone, and you’ll get something, and it’ll be from… I keep using Bank of America, just generically, but yeah, let’s say I bank there. 

I get a text from Bank of America saying: ” Did you just charge $273 and 42 cents to XYZ? 

So you go and say you press no or ”N,” and all of a sudden your phone rings and it’s Bank of America’s fraud division, and there’s a problem with your account, and that’s how they get in that way and then it proceeds the way I just talked about.

WALTER: Let me ask you this, because I’m glad you brought that up: I get those texts too. I’ll get them from Capital One. Are they sometimes legit, like it seems like you try to make this purchase for this much money with this vendor, yes or no?

KATHY: Well, if you’ve set up alerts with, let’s say, it’s Capital One, you go into your app or on the web account that you have and say: “I want to be alerted anytime there is a transaction over X dollars.” If you set that up, then, yeah, you’re gonna get that. 

If you are trying to make a transaction and your bank, for some reason, believes it is suspicious, they might deny your transaction, and then you quickly get a text saying: was that you trying to make that transaction? So all those are legitimate.

If you get something out of the blue, it asks this question, and if not, then take a link, call a number, or the phone rings. Those are the dangers. 

So what you really want to do is, anytime you get something like that instead of reacting the way it’s directing you to picking up the phone, texting whatever you have an account with that bank, go to where you get access to your account — whether you have an app or it’s the website, or you make a phone call and find out if there’s a problem.

WALTER: So let’s talk about the romance scam a little bit more. It seems to target lonelier, older people who might be widowed or unattached. I don’t know whether that’s a generalization, but some of the hallmarks, from what I’ve heard anecdotally, is that somebody contacts you and begins expressing romantic interest and is showering you with compliments and love-bombing you, and they’re always offshore for some reason, like they’re never in the same town or country as you, and then the ultimate ask comes for money. Is that a thing? Did I get that right?

KATHY: You got it right. So we do know that a very large percentage of the victims who report this are older adults, but it works on everybody, and the reality of loneliness is that it’s not just older adults who are feeling it these days. 

So yes, loneliness is a factor. Sometimes, when these relationships sort of build up, it’s fulfilling something for you, right? Maybe you are widowed or maybe you know, you don’t have a ton of friends, and you don’t go out, and whatever it is, and they’re gonna tap into that, but you’ve got it right.

What they’re trying to do is get you into believing that this is a real relationship, and then, you know, it’s a grooming. We call it “financial grooming. It’s a time commitment for these criminals. They’re not just going, “Hey, I saw you, and I really like the color of your eyes. Can you send me money?” It doesn’t happen that way, you know?

WALTER: Well, if they target my mom, for instance, it hasn’t happened to her, but do they know anything about her going in?

KATHY: Oh, absolutely.

WALTER: Okay.

KATHY: There is an entire industry of buying and selling and collecting data for purposes of setting up these fraud attacks. 

So, if mom’s on social media and maybe her settings don’t have it shut down so that anybody can see, and she’s talking about how proud she is of her grandson Mikey and that they’re going to this place for vacation, and all this stuff, they can get it off social media.

When you’re on social media, and you engage with games, sometimes those games are just games, but sometimes they’re set up to try to get information from you that can be used later in a scam. 

There are scammers that will make phone calls just to confirm that somebody’s answering that phone and put that together. And then they sell this data to one another, and they have lead lists.

WALTER: That’s very interesting. So it means that if you’re consulting with your parent, your older parent, or you’re just listening to this as an everyday person, you might want to recheck your social media settings to make sure they’re private enough. 

KATHY: Yeah, absolutely.

WALTER: Seniors are targeted by criminals pretending to be Medicare or Social Security or maybe even Medicaid. I don’t know. How common is that?

KATHY: All too common. For a long while, Social Security impersonation was one of the top impersonation scams. I don’t know where it sits right now, but you may get a call about a problem with your account or about how to get your COLA working. You may get a call from someone who says they’re from Medicare, that a new card is coming, and that they need some information to send you the plastic card, or that Medicare is now offering this cancer screening.

And if you don’t actually take the screening, which is free, then we’re not going to cover any costs if you get cancer, like stuff that kind of makes you afraid, or even just sounds like an opportunity. And they’re just trying to get your information.

WALTER: You mean, so in that case, they’re not so much looking for you to send them money, they’re looking for your Social Security number, or your Medicare number, so they can commit all kinds of fraud with it?

KATHY: Yeah. The Social Security impersonators quite often involve some form of payment. 

And mostly with Medicare, it’s about getting the data so that they can then sell that to illegitimate labs used by doctors to illegally bill Medicare for services not rendered.

WALTER: Medicare fraud, as we call it. 

KATHY: Yes. 

WALTER: Wow. There’s so much more I could ask you, but we’re running out of time. So let me jump to this. If your elderly relative or friend has been scammed or if you have been scammed, what do you do? What do you recommend that people do?

KATHY: If it’s a realization that happens quickly after the crime and involves a bank account or a financial firm, get in touch with them right away. See if there’s anything they can do to stop a transaction from being completed or claw back the money. If it were a gift card and they made you believe that if you buy a gift card and share the numbers off the back, then the problem that you’re dealing with will go away, and then you hang up and go, “Oh, wait a minute. I think that was a scam”.

Take that card, turn it over, and call the number on the back. Explain what happened and see if they can block the money from coming off of that card.

And then, importantly, we need to be reporting these to local law enforcement. I think, for a long time, we’ve been sort of led to believe that law enforcement can’t really do much about this, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t report them, because maybe there’s an opportunity, and maybe more reporting will help law enforcement understand how big the problem is.

FBI is a great place to go, and ic3.gov is where you would report it. They get tens of thousands of reports, and you don’t know if they’re going to be looking at your case or not, unless you’re somehow able to, you know, then contact local FBI and say, “I just put in this report, here’s the number, help me understand what you guys might be able to do for me.”

But frankly, they’re awash in a sea of reports — despite underreporting. I know AARP is involved in trying to make systemic change on that, but that’s kind of the situation we’re in right now. But it has to be reported.

WALTER: Great advice and amen to you for trying to push that. If people want to contact or access the AARP Fraud Watch Network, how do they do that?

KATHY: Well, the easy way online is AARP.org/fraudwatchnetwork. And then if you’re not sure about something, you can call the AARP Fraud Watch Network helpline. And the number there is 877-908-3360. And you don’t have to be a member or of a certain age if you’re a victim or you’re worried that your parent is involved in something. 

There are 150 trained specialists who will talk to you, help you understand what’s going on, and determine whether victimization occurred and what you need to do. And it’s all in a zone of no judgment.

They understand that this can happen to anybody.

WALTER: Now, that is wonderful. We close by asking every guest a question. I want to ask you this: What are the last six digits of your Social Security number?

KATHY: *laughs* Walter… 

WALTER: See, I would make a terrible scammer! 

KATHY: You’re just too nice.

WALTER: I’m just too nice and too honest. Thank you.

Anyway, look, I wish the world weren’t this way. It’s not as if we don’t have a million other things to protect ourselves against and worry about now and on behalf of our parents and grandparents. 

But, given that the world is this way, it’s wonderful to have had this conversation. And we love helping you share this information. And we applaud the work you’re doing to educate everyone.

KATHY: Thank you so much. And thanks for getting the word out for us. And, you know, last bit of advice, I’ll just go back to: share what you know. 

The more we talk about it, the more you learn about a specific scam, the more you’re much less likely to engage with it when it comes your way. You’ll remember.

WALTER: Yeah, it’s like inoculating yourself against a disease.

KATHY: Yeah, exactly.

WALTER: Well, thank you for helping inoculate our listeners. Kathy, again, hats off to you. And we hope to talk to you again in the future.

KATHY: I look forward to it. Thanks, Walter.

And as Kathy just said, if you want to access the AARP Fraud Watch Network, go to aarp.com/fraud. And that helpline number again, if you’re the victim of scams or want to report anything, is 877-908-3360. 

Kathy was a wonderful guest. We have terrific guests every week here on You Earned This. Our website is youearnedthis.org. That’s you-earned-this-dot-org. Also, you can visit ncpssm.org to subscribe to our newsletter and blog, and learn all about what we do here at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. 

Our producer is Melanie Reilly. Our engineer is Shahab Shokouhi . Our story editor is Donna Lack, and our editor is Steve Lack. Theme music by Simon Laszlo Jansen. Opening voiceover by Nicholas Maloof.

The You Earned This jingle was written by Walter Gottlieb, arranged by Jeff Gruber and our You Earned This singers, and recorded at Blue House Productions in Silver Spring, Maryland. Special thanks to our colleagues at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, who helped make this program possible. I’m Walter Gottlieb, reminding you: “You Earn This!”